New Grub Street (18 page)

Jasper let his eyes wander about the room.

'This is your father's study?'

'Yes.'

'Perhaps it would have seemed odd to Mr Yule if I had come in
and begun to talk to him about these purely private affairs. He
knows me so very slightly. But, in calling here for the first
time—'

An unusual embarrassment checked him.

'I will explain to father your very natural wish to speak of
these things,' said Marian, with tact.

She thought uneasily of her mother in the next room. To her
there appeared no reason whatever why Jasper should not be
introduced to Mrs Yule, yet she could not venture to propose it.
Remembering her father's last remarks about Milvain in connection
with Fadge's magazine, she must wait for distinct permission before
offering the young man encouragement to repeat his visit. Perhaps
there was complicated trouble in store for her; impossible to say
how her father's deep-rooted and rankling antipathies might affect
her intercourse even with the two girls. But she was of independent
years; she must be allowed the choice of her own friends. The
pleasure she had in seeing Jasper under this roof, in hearing him
talk with such intimate friendliness, strengthened her to resist
timid thoughts.

'When will your sisters arrive?' she asked.

'I think in a very few days. When I have fixed upon lodgings for
them I must go back to Finden; then they will return with me as
soon as we can get the house emptied. It's rather miserable selling
things one has lived among from childhood. A friend in
Wattleborough will house for us what we really can't bear to part
with.'

'It must be very sad,' Marian murmured.

'You know,' said the other suddenly, 'that it's my fault the
girls are left in such a hard position?'

Marian looked at him with startled eyes. His tone was quite
unfamiliar to her.

'Mother had an annuity,' he continued. 'It ended with her life,
but if it hadn't been for me she could have saved a good deal out
of it. Until the last year or two I have earned nothing, and I have
spent more than was strictly necessary. Well, I didn't live like
that in mere recklessness; I knew I was preparing myself for
remunerative work. But it seems too bad now. I'm sorry for it. I
wish I had found some way of supporting myself. The end of mother's
life was made far more unhappy than it need have been. I should
like you to understand all this.'

The listener kept her eyes on the ground.

'Perhaps the girls have hinted it to you?' Jasper added.

'No.'

'Selfishness—that's one of my faults. It isn't a brutal kind of
selfishness; the thought of it often enough troubles me. If I were
rich, I should be a generous and good man; I know I should. So
would many another poor fellow whose worst features come out under
hardship. This isn't a heroic type; of course not. I am a civilised
man, that's all.'

Marian could say nothing.

'You wonder why I am so impertinent as to talk about myself like
this. I have gone through a good deal of mental pain these last few
weeks, and somehow I can't help showing you something of my real
thoughts. Just because you are one of the few people I regard with
sincere respect. I don't know you very well, but quite well enough
to respect you. My sisters think of you in the same way. I shall do
many a base thing in life, just to get money and reputation; I tell
you this that you mayn't be surprised if anything of that kind
comes to your ears. I can't afford to live as I should like
to.'

She looked up at him with a smile.

'People who are going to live unworthily don't declare it in
this way.'

'I oughtn't to; a few minutes ago I had no intention of saying
such things. It means I am rather overstrung, I suppose; but it's
all true, unfortunately.'

He rose, and began to run his eye along the shelves nearest to
him.

'Well, now I will go, Miss Yule.'

Marian stood up as he approached.

'It's all very well,' he said, smiling, 'for me to encourage my
sisters in the hope that they may earn a living; but suppose I
can't even do it myself? It's by no means certain that I shall make
ends meet this year.'

'You have every reason to hope, I think.'

'I like to hear people say that, but it'll mean savage work.
When we were all at Finden last year, I told the girls that it
would be another twelve months before I could support myself. Now I
am forced to do it. And I don't like work; my nature is lazy. I
shall never write for writing's sake, only to make money. All my
plans and efforts will have money in view—all. I shan't allow
anything to come in the way of my material advancement.'

'I wish you every success,' said Marian, without looking at him,
and without a smile.

'Thank you. But that sounds too much like good-bye. I trust we
are to be friends, for all that?'

'Indeed, I hope we may be.'

They shook hands, and he went towards the door. But before
opening it, he asked:

'Did you read that thing of mine in The Current?'

'Yes, I did.'

'It wasn't bad, I think?'

'It seemed to me very clever.'

'Clever—yes, that's the word. It had a success, too. I have as
good a thing half done for the April number, but I've felt too
heavy-hearted to go on with it. The girls shall let you know when
they are in town.'

Marian followed him into the passage, and watched him as he
opened the front door. When it had closed, she went back into the
study for a few minutes before rejoining her mother.

After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself
regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of
manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand;
sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would
represent—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such
matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages—a
passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he could write
four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume,
and forty-five for the completed book.

Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward. Yet the
calculation gave him a faint-hearted encouragement. At that rate he
might have his book sold by Christmas. It would certainly not bring
him a hundred pounds; seventy-five perhaps. But even that small sum
would enable him to pay the quarter's rent, and then give him a
short time, if only two or three weeks, of mental rest. If such
rest could not be obtained all was at an end with him. He must
either find some new means of supporting himself and his family,
or—have done with life and its responsibilities altogether.

The latter alternative was often enough before him. He seldom
slept for more than two or three consecutive hours in the night,
and the time of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds
which marked the stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably
familiar to him; worst torture to his mind was the chiming and
striking of clocks. Two of these were in general audible, that of
Marylebone parish church, and that of the adjoining workhouse; the
latter always sounded several minutes after its ecclesiastical
neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed to Reardon
very appropriate—a thin, querulous voice, reminding one of the
community it represented. After lying awake for awhile he would
hear quarters sounding; if they ceased before the fourth he was
glad, for he feared to know what time it was. If the hour was
complete, he waited anxiously for its number. Two, three, even
four, were grateful; there was still a long time before he need
rise and face the dreaded task, the horrible four blank slips of
paper that had to be filled ere he might sleep again. But such
restfulness was only for a moment; no sooner had the workhouse bell
become silent than he began to toil in his weary imagination, or
else, incapable of that, to vision fearful hazards of the future.
The soft breathing of Amy at his side, the contact of her warm
limbs, often filled him with intolerable dread. Even now he did not
believe that Amy loved him with the old love, and the suspicion was
like a cold weight at his heart that to retain even her wifely
sympathy, her wedded tenderness, he must achieve the
impossible.

The impossible; for he could no longer deceive himself with a
hope of genuine success. If he earned a bare living, that would be
the utmost. And with bare livelihood Amy would not, could not, be
content.

If he were to die a natural death it would be well for all. His
wife and the child would be looked after; they could live with Mrs
Edmund Yule, and certainly it would not be long before Amy married
again, this time a man of whose competency to maintain her there
would be no doubt. His own behaviour had been cowardly selfishness.
Oh yes, she had loved him, had been eager to believe in him. But
there was always that voice of warning in his mind; he foresaw—he
knew—

And if he killed himself? Not here; no lurid horrors for that
poor girl and her relatives; but somewhere at a distance, under
circumstances which would render the recovery of his body
difficult, yet would leave no doubt of his death. Would that,
again, be cowardly? The opposite, when once it was certain that to
live meant poverty and wretchedness. Amy's grief, however sincere,
would be but a short trial compared with what else might lie before
her. The burden of supporting her and Willie would be a very slight
one if she went to live in her mother's house. He considered the
whole matter night after night, until perchance it happened that
sleep had pity upon him for an hour before the time of rising.

Autumn was passing into winter. Dark days, which were always an
oppression to his mind, began to be frequent, and would soon
succeed each other remorselessly. Well, if only each of them
represented four written slips.

Milvain's advice to him had of course proved useless. The
sensational title suggested nothing, or only ragged shapes of
incomplete humanity that fluttered mockingly when he strove to fix
them. But he had decided upon a story of the kind natural to him; a
'thin' story, and one which it would be difficult to spin into
three volumes. His own, at all events. The title was always a
matter for head-racking when the book was finished; he had never
yet chosen it before beginning.

For a week he got on at the desired rate; then came once more
the crisis he had anticipated.

A familiar symptom of the malady which falls upon outwearied
imagination. There were floating in his mind five or six possible
subjects for a book, all dating back to the time when he first
began novel-writing, when ideas came freshly to him. If he grasped
desperately at one of these, and did his best to develop it, for a
day or two he could almost content himself; characters, situations,
lines of motive, were laboriously schemed, and he felt ready to
begin writing. But scarcely had he done a chapter or two when all
the structure fell into flatness. He had made a mistake. Not this
story, but that other one, was what he should have taken. The other
one in question, left out of mind for a time, had come back with a
face of new possibility; it invited him, tempted him to throw aside
what he had already written. Good; now he was in more hopeful
train. But a few days, and the experience repeated itself. No, not
this story, but that third one, of which he had not thought for a
long time. How could he have rejected so hopeful a subject?

For months he had been living in this way; endless circling,
perpetual beginning, followed by frustration. A sign of exhaustion,
it of course made exhaustion more complete. At times he was on the
border-land of imbecility; his mind looked into a cloudy chaos, a
shapeless whirl of nothings. He talked aloud to himself, not
knowing that he did so. Little phrases which indicated dolorously
the subject of his preoccupation often escaped him in the street:
'What could I make of that, now?' 'Well, suppose I made him—?' 'But
no, that wouldn't do,' and so on. It had happened that he caught
the eye of some one passing fixed in surprise upon him; so young a
man to be talking to himself in evident distress!

The expected crisis came, even now that he was savagely
determined to go on at any cost, to write, let the result be what
it would. His will prevailed. A day or two of anguish such as there
is no describing to the inexperienced, and again he was dismissing
slip after slip, a sigh of thankfulness at the completion of each
one. It was a fraction of the whole, a fraction, a fraction.

The ordering of his day was thus. At nine, after breakfast, he
sat down to his desk, and worked till one. Then came dinner,
followed by a walk. As a rule he could not allow Amy to walk with
him, for he had to think over the remainder of the day's toil, and
companionship would have been fatal. At about half-past three he
again seated himself; and wrote until half-past six, when he had a
meal. Then once more to work from half-past seven to ten.
Numberless were the experiments he had tried for the day's
division. The slightest interruption of the order for the time
being put him out of gear; Amy durst not open his door to ask
however necessary a question.

Sometimes the three hours' labour of a morning resulted in
half-a-dozen lines, corrected into illegibility. His brain would
not work; he could not recall the simplest synonyms; intolerable
faults of composition drove him mad. He would write a sentence
beginning thus: 'She took a book with a look of—;' or thus: 'A
revision of this decision would have made him an object of
derision.' Or, if the period were otherwise inoffensive, it ran in
a rhythmic gallop which was torment to the ear. All this, in spite
of the fact that his former books had been noticeably good in
style. He had an appreciation of shapely prose which made him scorn
himself for the kind of stuff he was now turning out. 'I can't help
it; it must go; the time is passing.'